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Rilo Kiley

I always think of Tune-Yards as the female equivalent to comedian Reggie Watts, and the music he makes. Lead singer Merrill Garbus is essentially a one-woman band, or at least that’s how she started out, creating music out of sound loops and layering instruments and vocals on top of each other until the perfect song emerges. “Sunlight” was the first Tune-Yards song I heard back in ’09 or ’10, and it instantly became one of my favorite songs. In 2011, Tune-Yards released the album W H O K I L L which gave her more exposure, on Sirius radio and online. I also got to see her perform at Coachella that year, which was easily one of my favorite Coachella performances ever.

Now Merrill is back with the brand new song “Water Fountain”, the first track from the upcoming album Nikki Nack which will be released in May. In addition, you can currently get some extra goodies if you pre-order the album from her website. I already ordered the vinyl, which comes with a CD version of the album, and extra items for the first 100, 200 and 2,000 people who order the album there. (more…)

I think I probably discovered the band Rilo Kiley around the time that everyone else did, when their song “Portions For Foxes” became an alternative radio hit back in 2004. But it wasn’t until 2006 when lead singer Jenny Lewis released her first solo album, and co-founder Blake Sennett released the second CD by his side project The Elected, that I really got into their music.

Then in 2007, Rilo Kiley came back together to release their most recent CD Under The Blacklight, and it became my favorite CD of that year. After that, my wife and I got to see them in concert twice, and later saw Jenny Lewis solo twice as well.

There are a lot of great songs on Under The Blacklight, but the one that always stood out to me was “15,” which practically crosses over into the country genre. I won’t say too much about the song, you can listen to it for yourself, but it’s about the dangers of meeting someone on the internet and them not being as old as they might appear.

When Blake Sennett isn’t performing with his main band, Rilo Kiley, you’ll might find him performing with his side project The Elected instead. With Jenny Lewis off promoting her own solo projects, the band released their first disc back in 2004, and followed it up with the excellent Sun, Sun, Sun in 2006.

“The Bank and Trust” was always my favorite track on the disc. I later found out that it was co-written by Jenny Lewis. This is another one of those songs that will get stuck in my head days after I hear it. Let me know what you think.